This has indeed been an unusual and challenging year and sponsor support was critical to advancing ULI’s mission – providing leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide.  100% of our Annual Sponsorship dollars are kept in Central Texas and provide approximately 50% of our operations budget.  With Annual Sponsor Support in 2020, we were able to:

• Quickly pivot to virtual programing and update topics to provide COVID related information as the pandemic started to affect Austin.  With this pivot, we also utilized ULI’s global resources to include more out-of-town expert speakers.  Even with the pandemic, this year we had 11 monthly breakfasts (only missing March), 4 Greater Austin Regional Luncheons, 5 Young Leader Cheers and Chats, 2 WLI Visiting Leaders, 4 Virtual Happy Hours and 2 Regional Webinars with other District Councils from Texas and surrounding states.
• Grow our member development groups – Local Member Councils, Young Leader Mentorship Forum, and NEXT – with record applications during the summer as people crave the small group discussions that continued virtually.
• Hold a virtual extended version of the City Chat portion of Marketplace with officials from nine cities within the Austin region providing information about immediate and long-term goals and initiatives.
• Support ULI Americas Advisory Service Panel on the I-35 Cap and Stitch, which is also the topic of our November virtual breakfast.
• Host the Washington, DC District Council Women’s Leadership Initiative when they came to visit Austin in February.  Austin WLI provided a welcome reception and an evening of curated conversations for our guests.
• Conduct a survey to determine the impact of COVID-19 within the greater Austin real estate business community.  This survey was reconducted in November 2020 to compare results
• Meet with the City of Austin regarding economic development and real estate challenges and opportunities including their emerging Economic Development Corporation and considerations and goals for reentry and recovery from the pandemic.
• Develop a white paper on Transit Oriented Development: Opportunities for Affordability and Access in Austin as a joint effort between the Affordability and Transportation Strategic Councils.  This paper was also the topic of our August virtual breakfast.
• Kick off a new series, ULInsight, providing interactive info sessions on Facebook Live focused on timely policy and economic development topics.  The first “episode” was on Project Connect.
• Produce the 21 Day Equitable Development Challenge with activities to encourage both personal reflection and group discussions toward identifying real actions we can take individually, at our company/organization, and as a community to address the inequalities in the real estate industry. The challenge is one of ULI Austin’s early steps in our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which has been identified by the Management Committee and ULI Americas as a focus for FY21.